edward snowden nft selfportrait million charity
Edward Snowden has just changed his profile photo on the website to a self-portrait, which is depicted as a caricature of himself with lit candle in one hand and a small kitten, also holding a lit candle, in the other.
Snowden reached out to help children in need and to create something representative of how he sees himself by donating $1 million to the charity.
Image source: https://nftshowroom.com/pacolimited/collection/crowley2315_2315art_freeze-monkey-characters-26
Checks can be made out to "The Edward Snowden NFT Selfportrait Million Charity" or "NFT 1" for any donation up until December 31st 2016. To help others escape their own struggles by creating positive change for themselves and others, help contribute more. Donate to this great cause and help create something special and positive.
The photo circulated around Twitter, with users larking that Snowden was already immortalised in a National Portrait Gallery exhibition, but it was made clear by the organisation that the portrait, by Alison Jackson, is a "parody".
This is not a unique case as Jackson's work mostly comprises of parodies of celebrities and she has been altering photos of "important people" since the 1990s. However, many users responded with anger to the fact that Snowden was being dubbed as "just another celebrity". One user condemned Snowden for becoming part of the mainstream media agenda after he said privacy should never be compromised. The fact that the profile photo was a parody meant to ridicule Snowden for taking part in the mainstream media's agenda drew ire from other users. That Snowden donated a million dollars to charity was also seen negatively by some, with one user saying: "Worst of all is that you've become one of them. You just proved how capitalism/consumerism works."
This comes after many had praised Snowden for his altruistic acts, such as having donated his entire salary to charitable causes since 2013, helping millions of people across the globe. The reaction to his profile picture became a focal point of discussion, with Snowden being criticised and praised in equal measure.
Image source: https://hazemonkeysociety.com/
The charity has been described as Snowden's "saviour" by those who support his cause. It has been receiving an increasing amount of media coverage, with a BBC article last month stating: "The NFT Selfportrait Million Charity was set up on 5th December 2016, in the wake of Edward Snowden leaking 1.4million documents to journalists in 2013 and bringing about a worldwide privacy revolution."
A statement released by the NFT stated that: "[the portraits] raise funding for three causes – protecting and improving online privacy; improving internet access; and supporting charities that work to improve digital equality. With the world’s media descending on Westminster Magistrates’ Court, just behind and to the left of Big Ben, this is what I saw.
The idea of becoming a whistleblower had never occurred to me until I was contacted by Laura Poitras in January 2013. But these revelations about the NSA convinced me that there was no way for me to remain complicit in crimes against the American people.
By the end of January 2013, having been in the intelligence world for nearly 20 years, I was thoroughly disgusted with how we were conducting ourselves. The NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, had built an infrastructure that allows them to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards. In the summer of 2013, the NSA’s new director, Keith B. Alexander, reported that in the preceding year NSA had implemented approximately 100 new authorities to intercept communications worldwide. Less than half of one percent of these intercepts were rejected by auditing tools. This fact pattern leads me to believe that NSA's auditing is less than thorough.
For me, the bar represented an unacceptable risk to America and Americans. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. I knew that I couldn’t mount this kind of attack on my country and expect to remain free.
Image source: https://currency.com/nfts-adidas-enters-the-metaverse-via-bored-ape-sportswear
As journalists, we are typically privileged in that we can reveal anything we want. This privilege is costly, and should be used sparingly and responsibly. To me, blowing the whistle on the world’s most powerful spy agency was like dropping a bomb into a hornet’s nest — I could not finger the general public as my target because everybody is part of this system.
Image source: https://womanofsolana.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Untitled-design-7-1.png
And so, I began meticulously cataloging every electronic record from my six years working at the NSA and GCHQ: emails, chat logs, phone logs, video clips (recordings), audio recordings — everything.
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